Ji’nan to Nanpi – Day 29

Had a short and fitful sleep, so I woke up still very tired from the day before. I got a call from Lulu ordering me to get downstairs ASAP because the guys that we stayed with had a morning class. Not such a good start to the day.

It was drizzly and a little cold, and still half asleep while I put the bags on the motorcycle, Lulu and I started to get on each others nerves, which would culminate in an on-road verbal explosion later in the day.

The drive was unremarkable. Cloudy, little cold, and not much in the way of scenery after crossing the Yellow River, but the roads were good and at one point in took me more than half an hour to catch up with Lulu after I stopped to figure out our route.

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We got into Dezhou and I thought she ran a red light (I’m pretty sure she did) but the accusation did nothing for her mood. She sulkily mentioned being hungry. I started off, intending to find a cheap place to eat outside the main city area. Not long after that, I realised she wasn’t behind me any more and stopped to wait for her to catch up. She drove past me minutes later, not even slowing down, so I hurried to the next set of traffic lights to catch her. I pulled up beside her. “Where did you go?”. “Are you crazy?!! she screamed, “there was a jiaozi (dumpling) place just back there, didn’t you see it?”. I was surprised for a fraction of a second, but that gave way to cold fury “Calm down!!” I yelled back at her. “Can’t you see I’m looking for a place”. I drove off, my illiterate pride smarting a little and keeping an eye on the rear view mirror to see if she was following.

Five minutes later, I recognised the characters for noodle house (面馆) and stopped. She asked me not to speak to her for the rest of the day, and I knew she needed space, so I ate lunch by myself.

We drove on for another 80 kilometres, each rider stopping at their own leisure, waiting for the other, but not communicating, until it was close to dusk and I thought it best to stop early at a fairly nice Lvguan in Nanpi.



We had a long talk about what went wrong during the day and sorted ourselves out with a mutual apology. I will never forget the Chinese characters for jiaozi (饺子).